{"id":10951,"date":"2011-08-31T16:09:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T20:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10951"},"modified":"2011-08-31T16:09:07","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T20:09:07","slug":"some-good-advice-to-young-law-enforcement-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/08\/31\/some-good-advice-to-young-law-enforcement-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"Some good advice to young law enforcement employees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.popehat.com\/2011\/08\/31\/the-holy-shit-rule\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ken at <em>Popehat<\/em><\/a> used to be a 26-year-old federal prosecutor. He learned a few things on the job:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>But even at 26 I had a certain rudimentary old-mannish quality, and it occurred to me to ask &mdash; does that sound too good? So during lunch I wandered into the office of the U.S. Attorney &mdash; who had been my supervisor in rookie row not long before &mdash; to talk about it.<\/p>\n<p>He listened sympathetically. Then he told me. \u201cKen,\u201d he told me, \u201cif your reaction to a proposal is \u201cHOLY SHIT, THAT SOUNDS LIKE FUN,\u201d then as a government lawyer and member of law enforcement, you almost certainly shouldn\u2019t be doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was a hard rule, but one that served me well for the rest of my government career. It helped me avoid some foolish cinematic flourishes, some bad but tempting decisions, and some social events. (Take, for instance, the local ATF\u2019s notorious big-guns-and-barbecue-in-the-desert gatherings. Holy shit, that sounds like fun, doesn\u2019t it? Yeah. Never attend a desert barbecue-and-gun-extravaganza by a federal agency that vacillates between \u201cWHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCK YEAH\u201d and \u201cHey guys, watch this!\u201d as a motto.)<\/p>\n<p>Regrettably, many in law enforcement do not follow this simple rule. So some cops can be induced to do extremely foolish things &mdash; things that will shatter the constitutional rights of citizens, things that will expose them to vast liability, things that will threaten innocents with death &mdash; while under the influence of toys, cameras, celebrities, and tactical plans that wouldn\u2019t make the table read in an <em>A-Team<\/em> sequel. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken at Popehat used to be a 26-year-old federal prosecutor. He learned a few things on the job: But even at 26 I had a certain rudimentary old-mannish quality, and it occurred to me to ask &mdash; does that sound too good? So during lunch I wandered into the office of the U.S. Attorney &mdash; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,57,9],"tags":[98,101],"class_list":["post-10951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-humour","category-law","tag-police","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2QD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10952,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10951\/revisions\/10952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}